Abandoned 
Town type
Coal mining ghost towns
Coal camps and company towns, from patch towns in the East to company towns in the West, most of them emptied when their mines closed.
Town guides
22 coal mining town guides
Our complete guides, most-read first: history, what's left, current access, photos, maps and directions.
GuideCentralia
40.80, -76.34Columbia County, Pennsylvania
A coal borough of more than 2,000 people, emptied by a mine fire that has burned beneath it since 1962. A street grid, a few houses, a church and…
GuideThurmond
37.96, -81.08Fayette County, West Virginia
The busiest town on the Chesapeake and Ohio's New River line, a dry railroad town with a saloon-ringed hotel across the river. Five people lived here…
GuideMadrid
35.40, -106.15Santa Fe County, New Mexico
Madrid’s coal company town nearly emptied after the mines closed. Artists and residents brought its wooden houses back into use.
GuideDawson
36.66, -104.77Colfax County, New Mexico
A Phelps Dodge coal town of about 6,000 people, where two explosions killed nearly 400 miners. The town is gone. Its cemetery, with rows of white…
GuideConcrete City
41.19, -75.98Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
A model village of poured-concrete double houses that a railroad built for its miners in 1911. It was empty by 1924, and the buildings proved too…
GuideThurber
32.51, -98.42Erath County, Texas
A company coal town that held perhaps 10,000 people around 1920 and was nearly empty twenty years later. Its brick smokestack still stands beside…
GuideSan Toy
39.64, -82.04Perry County, Ohio
San Toy lost most of its population when coal mining ended. Brickwork and foundations recall the company town, while newer homes occupy the…
GuideSego
39.03, -109.70Grand County, Utah
A coal camp in the Book Cliffs became Ballard, Neslen and finally Sego. Its store walls and railroad remains survive in the canyon.
GuideKaymoor
38.05, -81.06Fayette County, West Virginia
A Low Moor Iron Company coal town built in three layers down the side of the New River Gorge, with houses on the rim, the mine halfway down and the…
GuideFranklin
47.30, -121.97King County, Washington
A company coal town on the Green River where 37 miners died in a mine fire in 1894. It emptied by 1919. Foundations, a grated mine shaft and a small…
GuideNuttallburg
38.05, -81.04Fayette County, West Virginia
John Nuttall's coal town at the mouth of Short Creek, leased by Henry Ford in the 1920s, mined out in 1958 and a ghost town by the early 1960s. The…
GuideCardiff
41.05, -88.29Livingston County, Illinois
A coal town that sprang up on the prairie in 1899, held more than 2,000 people by 1903 and was carted away after its mine closed in 1912. Two waste…
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